My thoughts (finally) on the Debate

(From a comment I left at ASV. I admit, Kerry seemed pretty smooth. And after the fact most all of the foreign policy ideas he put forth have been shown to be fundamentally flawed.

It's always been possible that Kerry would win. The professional anti-Bush hate machine (and all their little wannabe amateur follwers) have been beating that horse until it's not only dead, it's buried and the grass there is coming along nicely - or it would if people would quit beating that gravesite.

But I think that possibility has peaked and passed. The problem with those of us who have been paying attention and supporting Bush is that (maybe because we weren't under that pressure, maybe we're better eloquitors than Dubya), we sensed opportunities that Bush had to really lay in to Kerry, and those opportunities passed him by.

The Wrong War, Wrong Time meme was hammered hard, but it would also have been telling if Bush had mentioned the "Coalition of the Coerced, Bribed, and Bullied". It would have been telling if Bush had told Kerry that scoffing at the realtively small contribution of allies makes them less likely to support you even symbolically in the future. It would have been telling to say that his sister's attempts to subvert and destroy Australia's assistance is not the action that a Commander in Chief should allow.

The MSM is writing the "comeback kid" story, but with their own credibility on the rocks, I can't see them carrying it very far. In the meantime, in the words of a somewhat cooler movie than Phantom Menace, you've got to let it all go - fear, doubt, and disbelief.